


sleepless nights

by dilkirani



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Maveth - Freeform, No Dialogue, post-abduction to the future, post-med pod, post-wedding!, written post 5x12 but pre-unbearable sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 18:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14117982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dilkirani/pseuds/dilkirani
Summary: Four nights Jemma can't sleep.Written for a "write a fic with no dialogue" challenge. Maybe cheated a little?





	sleepless nights

_i. hydra._

Her flat is too quiet. She counts to sixty, hears the number on the alarm clock flip into the next minute, counts to sixty again. The white noise of her brain is just Fitz telling her everything she knew was wrong. Fitz, holding his destruction and her salvation in his hands. What has she learned, except that the world will only allow them one option—if he loves her, he won’t survive; if she saves him, she can’t be with him.

She is angry at him for: forcing her hand, thinking she would ever leave him behind, spending the last moments of his life planning his own death, the truths he’d hidden from her. She is heart-stoppingly angry at herself for: not being smart enough, fast enough, strong enough, enough, enough.

Sixty. Another sixty. Another sixty. 3:30 in the morning. Exhaustion leads to weakness leads to questions without answer. What does it mean to be in love? Somehow, Fitz had taken all the things he felt for her and fused them together, adding reagents until he created something new. She wishes she had someone to talk to. She wishes, really, that she could talk with Fitz because he has always been her person. _When did you know?_ she wants to ask. _How did you know?_

She knows she will never ask him even if she could because she is terrified. Because these are her options: if she begs for her best friend back, she can’t demand more. If she doesn’t want to live without him, she will have no choice.

If she tries. If she imagines pressing her lips to his, will her body tell her the truth? If she closes her eyes, she won’t sleep. Every morning, at 3:30 in the morning, she loses the tight control she has over herself and she tries. At a restaurant, sharing a bottle of wine. Holding hands as they walk through a park. Kissing him awake on a lazy morning and insisting he bring her breakfast in bed.

If she tries she can’t succeed. The fantasies splinter apart because all she can see is his face when he woke, scared and confused, because if he needs help she can no longer give it. All she can taste on his skin is the salt of her own tears. It’s never his arm gently tugging her along a moonlit boardwalk, it’s only her clawing desperately at him each night when the tides empty out to steal him away again. It’s the unbearable tightness in her chest because her alveoli can’t separate out the oxygen from the fear and shame surging through her lungs. The truth is she would have sacrificed anything to save him and still she couldn’t.

4:45 am. Repetition of the experiment returns predicted results: Love is not a cure. How can it matter what Fitz said or what she feels? If he loves her, he will drown. If she loves him back, she has already lost him.

Love, she knows, is such a silly thing to think about.

_ii. maveth._

He flinches now when she mentions _him_ , her favorite word, as if the ghost of a man she’d never even kissed in another galaxy could logically be considered viable competition. The funny thing is, the real flesh-and-blood person she shares a desolate planet with, the only other human she will ever see for the rest of her days, is no competition at all to the memory of Fitz’s hand in hers, his pleased smirk, the curl of her name on his tongue. Except it’s not funny; it’s not funny at all.

She feels sick with Will, sicker when she imagines herself with Fitz when she’s with Will, sickest when it’s over, the weight of her grief settling like stones in her belly. She wonders if she’s staying alive only because her body doesn’t know how to die.

Time has no meaning here, but during the moments they’ve designated as nights she tries to block out the sound of heavy breathing next to her and she counts. Sixty. Another sixty. Another sixty. If she imagines it’s Fitz, she will break her own heart because she knows how Fitz sounds in sleep, knows the way his limbs fit next to hers even though she’s not supposed to know, even though they always carefully fell asleep on opposite sides of the couch.

But if she remembers Fitz, she can’t be happy. If she forgets Fitz, she can’t be happy.

And Fitz—can he be happy? How long will he search for her? How long does she want him to try? The truth is, she doesn’t want him to quit because the body will always ache for home. Love, she knows, is such a silly thing to think about, but she has so much of it left to give him, so much spilling out of her pores and curdling in a barren wasteland because he’s too far away to use it.

It’s funny, that the most meaningful relationship of her life existed in a space others would classify as mere friendship, or partnership, as if this makes it less than. It’s funny that it took being transported to an alien planet to understand the unfathomable depth of her own love for him, when she should have known by the staccato rhythm of her heartbeat, by the way he drew her into his orbit, by his tender smile catching her off guard and making her remember: _Perthshire_.

Except it’s not funny; it’s not funny at all.

_iii. 2091._

The stars have always been her guide, her map marking clearly her place in the universe. On Maveth, she calculated the shortest distance between the twin points of her heart and Fitz’s and found it wasn’t a straight line. Here, she is home, or some version of it, and how had she let herself forget all of it means nothing without his smile pressed against hers. Everything she needed was in his arms, and now she realizes how foolish that was, to form a home from delicate flesh, to place her happiness in a vessel that could only age and fall apart. There is no other way to balance the equation: this was always their end.

When she lies in bed at night, every white noise muted, she wonders if she’s selfless enough to hope he’d found someone else. It hurts too much right now, when a week ago he’d touched her shoulder in a diner and she’d thought _I will tell you. When we are alone I will tell you I’ve wanted to marry you for so long and nothing has changed_. It hurts to imagine him sharing all parts of himself with someone else, the precious, private moments that belong to her alone.

Maybe she was selfish on Maveth, using their psychic connection to beg him not to give up. Maybe she was selfish at the bottom of the ocean, to drag him with her when he’d made his choice. Maybe now she has weighed all her options and learned she never had any after all: if she keeps him, he can’t be happy. If the future exists, he doesn’t. If he remains tethered to her heart, he has already died alone.

He’s always hated being alone, and she knows this, so she holds the ache of him in her lungs and breathes through the aftershocks, and when she can manage it without choking on her sobs, she puts this out into the universe: _I hope you were happy with her. Or him. I hope you were the happiest version of yourself._

Love, she knows, is such a silly thing to think about when the world is ending. But for her, the world ended without warning and she didn’t have time to give him all the love she had left in her. She hopes somehow he managed to take it anyway.  

_iv. the lighthouse._

Fitz fell asleep hours ago, tipsy and sated, but she’s still awake, buzzing with so much joy that it overflows and bubbles along the surface of her skin. If she has just experienced the best moment of her life, she can only want to relive it.  

_I miss you_ , she thinks at him. He is lying pressed to her side, his quiet exhalations feathering against her collarbone and she misses him and she loves him more than could ever be quantified or believed. She runs a finger along the curve of his jaw, hovering millimeters above his skin so as not to wake him, but she can feel the phantom prickle of his stubble anyway. She has always been attuned to him, hyper aware of his presence and his absence. She wants to cover his mouth with hers and breathe euphoria into his cells, and his soft smile against her lips as he wakes will only be his heart welcoming her home.

She has lived multiple lifetimes of loss and sacrifice and choosing the lesser of unbearable sorrows, and now a whole universe of new possibilities is flooding through her. She loves him, so she can hold him. He is her family, and he can give her the rest of their family.

She can long for him and she can tell him; she can touch him and she can save him. He can be her past and her present and all of her futures. She can love him always, always, always. How can she possibly keep all of this inside her?

His eyes flicker open like she’s willed it, and maybe she has. Even in the dark his bright blue irises sparkle. He knows. After all this time, he must recognize the cocktail of adoration and happiness and longing rushing through her veins, lighting up pieces of her heart that have only ever been his. In these precious, private moments, she doesn’t need to speak because he already knows, but still she reaches for him and she says—

 


End file.
